


Winter Manners

by LectorEl



Category: Irish Mythology, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Bunny is not a happy bunny, Gen, Jack that is not how you make friends, blue and orange morality, no, no Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LectorEl/pseuds/LectorEl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the rotg_kink meme:</p><p>Shortly after Jack rose from his lake, the Fae found him, alone and unclaimed. They took him, raised him as their own, and taught him of the world. Jack's a good son of the Winter Court, and he makes them proud.</p><p>Unfortunately, the Fae view of the world is a little different than most. As the Guardians discover first-hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jack stops abruptly at the edge of his lake, tasting a familiar presence in the air. Jamie, who had been following along gamely, stops as well, reaching out for Jack’s hand.

“Hey, kiddo,” Jack knelt to look at Jamie, and squeezes his hand, “I need to go, my queen’s calling me. I’ll be back soon. Don’t try to follow me.”

Jamie’s a good kid, and he’s read enough fairy tales that Jack’s confident he won’t do something Jack told him not to. He’s more perceptive than the guardians in that way – Jack still hasn’t convinced them to leave him alone when he asks.

“Okay,” Jamie says, chewing on his lip. “Will you – I mean, you will be okay.” He looks up at Jack, somewhat pleadingly. Jack nods.

“Because I’m not in any danger.” Jack ruffles Jamie’s hair. He’s getting a hang of proper manners, and he’s so proud of the boy’s progress. “Go on, get. Your sister’s waiting for you.”

“See you soon,” Jamie says, looking at Jack meaningfully before turning back towards Burgess.

Jack smiles at Jamie’s retreating back. “He’s the first mortal to believe in me.”

“A fine boy,” the snow queen agrees, resting her hand at the small of Jack’s back to guide him. “He is not the only one.”

“They’re not mine like he and his sister are.” Jack waits until the queen settles herself on a fallen log, and sits at the Snow Queen’s feet, leaning back against her legs.

“Good morrow, my queen,” he says, twining a thread of frost up her bare leg. The queen giggles like a child, and taps her toe against his spine, running a sheath of ice along his back.

“Good morrow, my own,” she replies, voice sweetly, coolly fond. She runs her fingers through his hair, freezing it into a semblance of neatness and then constructing a thin circlet of ice atop it. “You have been at work while you’re away.”

“I’ve taken up a position among the spirits, now. A guardian of childhood.” Jack spins out a delicate construction of clear ice and tosses it into the air.

“They are odd companions,” the queen says, catches the icy construction easily, adding a rim of frost before sending it spinning again. The wind grabs it, carving thin furrows before letting it drop back into Jack’s hands. Jack laughs, coaxing loops of ice out from the edges, and bouncing back to the queen.

“They’re spring’s people. It’s their nature.” Jack watches the wind tumble the slowly developing sphere about with avid interest. “The one from below and the one from above caught me.”

The queen reaches up and grabs the sphere from the air, examining with a critical eye before shattering it into a burst of fine ice. “The weaver and the bone-keeper are sharp creatures.”

“Blades of flesh. Quite beautiful.” Jack traces a loop of frost around her ankle idly. “One of the bone-keeper’s daughters is mine.”

“Two mortals and a daughter of the air. You’ve done well for yourself.”

Jack taps his fingers against the frozen ground, ferns of frost curling out from the points of contact. “The one from below could have been mine as well, but it’d be unwise to take him.”

The queen hums. “Your rooms at the court will be altered.”

“They should be finished by the winter after next.” Jack rises to his feet, and bows. “I’m going now. Joyous travels.”

“I will return to the court. Strong winds and solid ice.” She presses a frozen kiss to his forehead, and dissolves into ice on the wind.

Jack has good dreams that night. Jaime, Sophie, and Baby Tooth, hair and feathers limed with frost, playing in the snowy fields of the winter court and sleeping in a pile of furs and goose-down pillows. He wakes smiling.

He knows it won’t be like that in the near future. He has two winters where he needs to solidify his claim, and then however long after it takes for them to adjust to their new home. They are worth enough respect that he will not wipe their memories of the mortal world, which makes the situation more precarious.

It will be worth it, though. Jack's never had changelings of his own before, but already, he thinks he understands those who do better. They are points of ice in the back of his mind, comforting like the first chill of winter.

A smile curls up the side of his mouth, something softer than his usual grin. His. He savors the word. His, just as he is the queen’s.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack’s still just young – by the standards of every court, the spirits, and the mortal world besides – when he stumbles across a revel held by the Winter Court.

The lights draw him. They shine blue and silver, like nothing he’s seen before. The wind, his dear and beloved friend, drops him to his feet silently, among the trees that ring the rounded clearing. He creeps to the edge of the treeline, but no further. He’s learned to avoid the pain of being walked through, and the figures dance with such speed Jack daren’t risk it.

He clings to the trunk of a young sapling, hungry and yearning, watching the lights and the dancers and the sheer beauty of it with a desperate, despairing need.

It is not the first time Jack has cried from his loneliness. He has no one to impress, and his hurts are too much for him. He cries unselfconsciously, gasping, wracking sobs that send him to his knees. He rocks himself back, forward, back again.

“Little one.” Hands grasp his chin, tilting his face up gently. They are cold, cold like Jack’s own, and as he swallows desperately, more hands join them, petting his hair, his back, his arms.

“Snow child,” another voice adds, low and rasping, their breath brushing his neck as he is embraced. “Poor thing.”

Someone laughs like ice breaking. “Abandoned child.” Sudden silence, heavy with a strange weight, as he is lifted and cradled against a bare, cold chest. “Our child, perhaps.”

Jack knows he should be reacting. Saying, doing, being something. But the cold is wonderful and comforting, and he feels safe being held. Everything is distant.

Later, much later, when he begins to remember he’d had a life before the Court, he will learn that what he experienced is called changeling fugue, which keeps the child from fighting when they’re claimed. No apologies were offered. Jack doesn’t think he needed one.

Jack explains this to Jamie and Sophie in simple terms, dressed up as a fairy tale. Sophie accepts it as such, but Jamie watches him with a knowing look. He’s grown in the last year.

“You’re a changeling,” Jamie said, dragging his toe through the thin layer of snow Jack had laid down in the Bennet’s backyard. Jack makes a sound of agreement, extending Jamie’s line into a loop around the oak tree.

“The snow queen’s own. She saved me.” Jack takes Jamie’s hand, lofting them both over the design so Jamie can work on the far side of it.

Jamie crouches to sweep a small section of snow clear. “Like you saved me from Pitch.”

Jack hesitates. He interacts with Jamie as a member of the Winter Court, but Jamie has only officially been introduced to him as a Guardian. It would not, strictly, be wrong to respond with a falsehood here. The other Guardians lie.

But he has kept to his winter manners with Jamie, hasn’t bothered with summer ones since the first night. Jamie is his as changeling first, a child second. And his queen raised him better than that.

“Yeah,” Jack admits at last, smoothing away Jamie’s footprints. “Just like that. Nearly three centuries ago.”

Jamie frowns. “Three hundred years… that’s a long time to be unseen.”

“It is. I don’t have many people who are mine. Even among the Court.” Jack’s smile is a touch wobbly. Jamie looks at him, prompting him without straying into the rudeness of open questions.

“I’m spirit as well as fae. Less summer than winter, and less summer than I would have been without the Court, but it’ll always be in my veins,” Jack says. “I need things other fae don’t. Believers, among others.”

Jamie gives him a dirty look when he doesn’t say more, and uses a branch to carve a curlicue into their design. “This no question rule is really irritating.”

“It’s good practice for dealing with other fae. You don’t have to worry with friends, but anyone else will play the technicalities to the breaking point.” Jack gave a one-shouldered shrug. “We think it’s fun, but I know mortals get a bit more twitchy about it.”

The conversation drifts to other things, winter storms and sled rides and the nature of the wind. But Jack keeps thinking about it. He’s been ignoring the contradictions, mostly, between his first instincts as a creature of winter, and what he knows is expected of him as a spirit. But it’s not always easy.

Mortals are strange, but they’re a familiar sort of strange, one that Jack’s spent three centuries studying. Spirits are more difficult. He follows the other Guardian’s lead in most things, never entirely understanding why they do what they do. He has the vague sense that they wouldn’t be happy if they knew that Sophie, Jamie, and Baby Tooth belong to him. But he’s not sure why.

It’s time to talk to the queen, Jack decides. She’s better at dealing with spirits. She’ll know what to do better than he does.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’ve gotta go, you guys,” Jack says, rising from his seat far back from North’s fireplace. “Things to do, people to bother, and all that.”

“Where are you going, Jack?” Tooth asks, and Jack locks down hard on the flare of hurt her question causes. She’s not Fae, he reminds himself. The name’s a coincidence, she’s not of any court, she’s not trying to hurt him. She’s trying to be friendly, he _knows_ that.

“Back to my lake,” Jack says, scooping up his staff. “I’ve got a meeting with another elemental spirit.” Not a lie, the Snow Queen was the embodiment of the winter, not just its frosts and storms like Jack.

“You going to be alright, frostbite?” Bunny asks, and _he’s not Fae, it’s not an insult_.

Jack considers the question, and finally says, “Probably. The odds of the white lady seriously harming me are low.”

He ducks out the window before North or Sandy can catch him, and envelop him in more well-meant but cringe-inducing concern. He’s risking arriving late as it is, and that’s not a game he wants to play right now. It’s fun, but it involves rather more sharp objects than he wants near him until he figures out how his immortality has been altered by becoming a guardian. 

He lands softly on the center of the lake, wind cradling him as it lowers him to the ice. The formalities of incurring debt are different than those of everyday relations, and he loves, and respects, his queen too much not to follow them.

“Be welcome upon my home ground, ever and always,” Jack says, tapping his Shepard’s crook against the ice, spreading a wide circle of frost that twists and undulates in upon itself in curling patterns.

“I am welcomed gladly, my own,” the snow queen says, stepping out of air above the frost-doorway. Jack offers her his hand, helping her to the shore, where they sit across from one another in the snow.

“You are troubled,” the queen says, taking his hand in her own. 

“I am. The world of spirits is strange at times,” Jack agrees. “I would have your guidance, my queen.”

She smiles at him, young and sweet like the first snowfall of the season. “It is yours.” 

“I’m afraid the guards will react poorly to my second nature,” Jack says. He looks down, then back up at the queen. “I cannot say why I believe as I do, but I am convinced.”

“Spirits are different from Fae, that is true. Their ways are not our own.” The queen shrugs, making the glimmering crystals of ice in her mantle chime. “Sometimes I fear we did you a disservice, to allow you back out among their realm.”

“I would have gone eventually, my queen. Too much summer in me to be banished completely.” Jack knew that even when his memories had been gone. He changes the subject, saying, “They will learn eventually, and then I will have to do something.”

“Something can be nothing, my own.” The queen laughs at Jack’s expression, and taps him on the forehead, leaving a dot of ice. “It’s true. They can do nothing to you. Your oath cannot be revoked – the silver sun knew your nature when he named you among their number. They cannot stop you from claiming your own, not when they’re already marked, and they cannot cage or slay you when I wear your heart at my wrist.”

There’s a sudden crash in the bushes behind them. Jack startles to his feet, the queen following with more grace.

“We have an eavesdropper,” she says, sweeping her hand forward in an elegant gesture. The bushes part, and Jack covers his eyes.

“Bunny. Lemme guess, Sandy, Tooth and North are probably on their way too,” he groans. “You know, if I’d wanted you to come, I would have _invited_ you.”

“Frostbite, that’s the Snow Queen,” Bunny says, stress lining his voice.

“Uh, yeah. I know that,” Jack says, raising an eyebrow. “Known it for a while, actually.”

“The bleeding Snow Queen has your heart.”

“ _Still_ with the knowing, Bunny.”

“And you don’t see anything wrong with that?” Bunny demands. Jack winces, and he can feel the queen’s mood darken.

“Ill-mannered cur,” she hisses, dragging Jack closer to herself as if to physically shield him from Bunny’s poor behavior. “Do not speak to my own in such manner.”

“This from the crazy psycho lady with a kidnapping habit,” Bunny snarls back. “Bit hypocritical to be talking about manners.”

Jack frowns, glancing at the queen. Her brows are furrowed, head cocked as she stares at Bunny. Right. She doesn’t get what the connection between those two things is either.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sneaks in through the back door with a too-short update.*

The queen clicks her tongue, and slips her mantle from her shoulders, draping it over Jack with a single fluid gesture. “This conversation does us no service. Come, my own.”  
  
“Don’t you dare,” Bunny hisses. “Jack’s one of us now.”  
  
Jack sees the tension of the queen’s shoulders, and worries. Bunny both is and isn’t his, and for all his rudeness, Jack knows the spirit means well. “My queen,” he begins, falling silent when she looks down at him.  
  
“I will not do harm to what is mine,” the queen reminds him. She slides her hand over his eyes, `s̀͜͏p̵̸͡e̡̡̛á̀k̴͢ş`   
  
– and Jack stumbles as the pond is replaced by North’s workshop.   
  
“ – is unharmed, cease your attack,” his queen commands. Jack blinks in confusion, realizing belatedly she’s addressing North . . . who has twin swords in hand, one pressed to his queen’s neck.  
  
“North, back off!” Jack snaps, lunging for his sword arm. North startles, Tooth lunges to back him up, Bunny shouts, and Sandy’s symbols whirl furiously.  
  
The queen sighs like the fracturing of a glacier, using the confusion to catch Jack by the collar of the mantle and tug him to her side. She casts an amused eye upon him, the set of her mouth promising interesting things will happen as a result of this.  
  
“My own is unharmed,” she repeats, curling her fingers into Jack’s hair, “and we have much to discuss, guards of innocence.”  
  
Jack wraps her mantle tighter around himself. _Changeling_ , he thinks, letting the queen lead him over to one of the benches scattered about the workshop. In this moment, his role is the queen’s changeling. Half-grown, bright and delicate like frost in the dawn light. Counterweight to the long darkness of winter nights that the queen carries within herself.  
  
He smiles at them all, careless and young. “You did say you wanted to know more about my life,” he reminds the guardians, laughing at the consternated expressions he receives in return.  
  
“Impish child,” the queen murmurs, a smile hidden in her voice. “Be mindful of the game.”  
  
“Minding,” Jack says, settling cross-legged at her feet. “White Lady, these are the guards of Janus' road.”  
  
“Manny preserve us, he's talking like a fae,” Bunny mutters, and North jabs him in the ribs.  
  
The queen's skirts rustle, and Jack can picture the way her brow must be arched. “I have doubts that there's enough vinegar on hand for that. I suppose smoking might suffice, but winter has never been fond of flame.”  
  
The look of unhidden amusement on Sandy's face makes Jack want to cackle. He always did suspect the weaver had a fae-like sense of humor.  
  
“Sweet tooth . . .” Tooth trails off before perching on the railing overlooking the workroom floor. “You've known the snow queen for a long time, haven't you.”  
  
It's not quite a question, and by the way Tooth winces, she realizes how close to rudeness she's skirting.   
  
“For a moment, or a lifetime,” Jack agrees. Then, because he _is_ the mediator here - “Being called a fairy means the fae probably know you,” Jack says, cocking his head up at her. The other guardians are mostly silent, watching them with tense expressions.  
  
“We're acquainted.” Tooth smiles wryly. “I'm more familiar with the summer court than winter.”  
  
“Summer is as summer was.” The queen dips her head, acknowledgment and sympathy in one. Summer does not like those outside its court.   
  
“And winter is as winter will be,” Jack adds. Tooth nods, and that seems to be a signal for Baby Tooth to come zooming out, and settle on Jack's shoulder. The other guardians don't particularly relax, but the threat of violence breaking out seems to lessen.  
  
“This is that which must be spoken of,” The queen says. “My own, and his place between us. I will not allow him to be damaged because your games are different than ours.”


	5. Chapter 5

“I'd my first decade in memory when they fae found me,” Jack starts, running his fingers along the wood of his Shepard’s crook. “And Kansas was bleeding when I first ventured out of the court's embrace. The time between is . . . mutable.”

 

“1854?” North asks Bunny in an undertone.

 

Bunny nods. “ 'Fore the American civil war, right.”

 

“Time of Beecher's bibles and border ruffians, and me right in the middle of it,” Jack agreed, and felt the weight of the queen's consideration. He's straying, leaning more spirit than fae, with this focus on dates and details. But details are so important when dealing with spring's people, and it will not be her who supplies them.

 

His queen is still watching him, hearing what he hasn't spoken aloud. At last, she touches his neck, lightly, and murmurs, “I am too far from them for us to speak clearly.”

 

It takes him a moment. It's been a long, _long_ time since she leaned on him. “My ending is yours to borrow,” he replies, and settles his hand over hers. Across the heart the queen wears at her wrist, the one he gave her. The guardians are all silent, watching, as light sparks inside the glass orb of his heart.

 

It is not quite a chill that settles in him, though his queen's hand grows warm against his cooling skin. It is a void, if the void was filled with something that was not-quite-light. He lacks the words for it, to describe what it is to wear infinity.

 

“Speech between us should be . . . easier, now, if not simpler. It is difficult to remember the nature of being finite,” the white lady says, and draws her legs up under herself. “My own has spoken of how he came to our court, but not of how he came to yours.”

 

Jack grins at the unspoken cue, propping his chin on his hands. “They found me a babe's lifetime ago, winter's breath, after our cousin above marked me as their own. We played a game of existence with fear, and came to a draw. It's all echoes.”

 

There's a moment of silence. Then - “He gets worse. Of course he does. Did anybody even understand that?” The spring asks, voice thick with frustration.

 

The white lady winces. “Your own have no manners, changling.”

 

He shrugs. “They are all of the rabbit's aspect, in the end. For them, frost may also be a freeze.”

 

“As I see.” She inclines her head to him, and then turns her eyes to the other. “So you, too, see. My own is fae as well as spirit.”

 

The bone-keeper nods, acting the voice for the guards. “We do, I think. But. There's a more particular reason we're talking, isn-” She cuts herself off.

 

“My own is fae as well as spirit, and has the needs of both, and some of an in-between creature.” the white lady sighs, warm breath fluttering against Jack's chilled skin. “He is sacrifice at his center, cousin. He will not seek out what is not given.”

 

“Jack said fun was his center,” the one above contradicts. And that's true. The white lady looks down at him, surprise in her mortal-pale eyes.

 

Jack winces himself, pain echoing even now at the unintended lies he told. “It was dark, and I was frightened. I am Joy, too. It's flickery.” He turns to the guards, and bites his lip. The explanation is tricky, and he needs them to understand.

 

“I saw my past, and saw Joy, and it sang to me. I thought it truth. But I saw more than that, and there was sacrifice, freely chosen. I thought then, 'this is truth, and Joy falseness,' but that too was incorrect.”

 

Jack looks to the one above, seeking understanding. He spoke of layers, at their first meeting. Surely this not too different. “I am sacrifice. And I am joy. They are not separate. I chose my sister, before my birth. I chose her life over my own. I chose her happiness. A frost may be a freeze.”

 

“And what is divided must still be bound together, least it split entirely.” The queen breathes out a sigh of icy wind.

 

There is something growing in the guards' eyes, slow but sure. “And we can help frostbite, somehow,” the one from below says.

 

The weaver summons the images of a book, a teacher at a lectern, students at desks. The white lady looks at him, and the ice of her gaze shifts.

 

“If you will learn, I will tell you what is needed,” she agrees. Jack smiles, and lets his head fall back against the queen's legs. Both parts of his existence shift, align.

 

Things will be better now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Ugh. This chapter fought me every step of the way. I didn't get in everything I wanted, but the way it turned out, that'd require a /lot/ more work, and I'm not quite up for that atm. So yeah, more details on Jack, changlings, and the winter court will be in the sequel, whenever I get around to writing it.


End file.
